I’m not sure who is still out there reading blogs or reading this blog in particular. You must have noticed the trickle of posts over the past year or so. I unfortunately must admit that this blog’s time has come to an end. I no longer have the time or energy to keep it going as it once was.

The plan as of now is to archive this site permanently. I intend to put the archive up on the horsesthinkpress.com website in the near future. Horses Think Press will indeed continue and there will be a news page over there as well in addition to the archived blog site.

Meanwhile, I plan to start something from scratch over here on horsesthink.com. I have grown attached to this web url and have decided to use it for other things.

Thanks to everyone who tuned in to read my rants and recommendations over the past few years, it has been a fantastic learning experience.

Stay tuned here and at horsesthinkpress.com for updates, projects and new work.

I have launched a website dedicated to the book publishing we are doing here at Horses Think.

Right now the entire series of 12 Books I published are featured there. More projects will be added soon. For the latest news, keep following this blog which is also accessible from the News link on the press site.

Everything is still a work in progress but feel free to have a look around.

Seth Price
There are two basic trends in website design for successful artists today, completely non-existant and the definitive archive. Seth Price’s Distributed History is absolutely an archive and full of wonderful images, essays, pdfs, mp3 downloads, etc. For what it lacks in design it makes up for in content.

Greg.org
Still the funniest and most original art content I read on the net.

Taylor Tailor
This guy Taylor is building his wardrobe from scratch and the results are quite impressive.

New But Old Discoveries:
If you haven’t heard of Bern Porter, take a moment and peruse the website set up by his estate. This man was ahead of his time in all sorts of fascinating ways. Porter was definitely the biggest discovery I made at the New York Art Book Fair this year.

Atelier Brancusi
Built by Renzo Piano and tucked quietly alongside the overblown
Pompidou, the Atelier Brancusi encases the artist’s studio, works and tools
in a circumnavigable glass cube. It seemed nearly forgotten on the day I
went, with just a handful of people moving through the space in hushed
tones. The peaceful and satisfied nap I took on one of the benches felt
entirely appropriate.

Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis writes short, and sometimes really short stories that I don’t
want to dishonor by trying to recount. She is supremely self-conscious,
language obsessed and funny. The work defies genre and manages to be
both painfully hermetic and wonderfully alive. I got my parents her first
novel, This is the End, for Christmas and will be stealing it soon.

Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Get your head right. Written in 1973 by a man who died within a year of
finishing it (just missing out on his Pulitzer-how perfect), this book is the
most comprehensive, frightening and ultimately empathetic account of
human motivations and failures I’ve come across. While there are some
arguable and dated moments, (Becker trying to explain the pathology of
homosexuality is a low point) you should read this if you’re worried.

Allen Edmonds
I’ve been picking these up on Ebay and they’ve revived my faith in the
pleasures of considered, well built objects. Handcrafted on the last with 360
degree Goodyear welting and shock absorbent cork insoles, they are sturdy,
beautiful and one of the few remaining American shoemakers still producing
domestically.

Isa Genzken at the Museum Ludwig
I’ve always appreciated the way Isa Genzken draws out the uncanny and
erotic in pop culture. Looking at one of her installations in the somewhat
dilapidated Ludwig Museum, I saw something else. They looked old. The
ebony shellacked Donald duck was dusty and the skewered plastic coca cola
umbrella was yellowed and cracking. Seeing the manic sexiness of her work
tempered by time and decay left me a bit shaken. I wonder if Genzken
would consider this a success.

Bob Jackson Cycles
Steel frame bikes hand built by Bob Jackson in Leeds, England since the
50s. My chromed Bob Jackson was a gift after my last bike was stolen and
in addition to being a great ride, it is supremely cool looking and allows me
to have conversations with bike enthusiasts of my father’s generation.

Vincent Scully: Modern Architecture and Other Essays
I picked this up at CAA’s book fair and it has changed my life. Scully
condenses a lifetime of learning into incredibly concise and poetic essays
exploring the role of ideology and desire in the built environment.

Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be (2012). I found this well-crafted book, part novel and part memoir, to be very sexy. I supremely disliked certain parts, but I couldn’t stop thinking or talking about it for months after with everyone I came into contact with. I read Erica Jong’s 1973 novel Fear of Flying directly afterwards and think that they are similar (Heti’s version being better and smarter) in their inquest into how to be a young woman who craves both sexual domination/submission and intellectual validation and agency. Along the same lines and for the same reason, I love the HBO show Girls. It’s so hard to be a feminist sometimes in 2012.

When We Were Kings (1995). I watched this film about the mythic fight between Ali and Foreman in 1972 Zaire for the first time this year. I can confidently say that it is the most affective, muscular documentary that I have ever seen. George Plimpton and Norman Mailer were there and have funny and astute commentary on the fight. But it is Ali who is has the most charismatic charge (fear only seem to breed more charisma in him). Both out of the ring and in it he is the smartest and savviest one there.

The Summer Olympics, once every four years (2012). Track and Field, mostly, but also everything else.

Wayne Koestenbaum introduction for Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse (2010). This edition came out in 2010, but I only just read it. Koestenbaum, who almost never steers wrong, gives me a deeper and more human understanding of the book, which is itself a very profound description of longing.

Sanja Ivekovic: Sweet Violence at the MoMA (2011-2012). The only art-related thing on this list. I found it sensitive and biting. This show gave me lots of ideas, and taught me a lot of recent history about the former Yugoslavia that I was ashamed that I didn’t know.

My brother Gabriel Winant, a Doctorate student at Yale, wrote an article, Grad Students to the Barricades, for Dissent Magazine a few months ago about unionizing the graduate students, and the larger stake and importance of labor unions within academic institutions. Even if you are not in academia, it is hugely relevant. Truth to power!

Mast Books on avenue A is the best book store that I have ever been to.